Fallen Crest Public(114)

“Oh.” She ran her thumb across the screen and typed in the password. As she saw the missed calls and text alerts from me, she looked up. An apology was there.
I lifted a shoulder. I was here. It didn’t matter anymore.
“Let’s go,” Logan growled in my ear.
“Be nice to her.”
He swung back around to Heather. “Are you kidding me?”
“Be nice to her,” she repeated. A different message was sent between them, and she added, “You’re not seeing it from her eyes.”
He stopped. Whatever she meant, it hit him. More curses slipped out before his hand gentled on my arm. “Come on, Sam. I’ll take you home.”
“Can you drive?”
“Yes.” He looked as if he’d seen his own ghost. “I’m suddenly very sober.” Then he turned and I started to go with him. It was then that I saw them.
Everything stopped.
My heart froze.
My lungs shrunk.
Everything shattered.
Knowing about it hadn’t prepared me. Hearing about it hadn’t prepared me, but seeing it was the worst way for it to become real.
Mason was sitting on the back of a truck. It had been pulled so it was hidden behind the others, but it wasn’t the sight of him that had a dagger slicing through my insides. Kate was straddling him. Her breasts were pushed against his chest, and she had both arms around him. She grabbed a fistful of his hair as she gyrated on top of him, rubbing against him. A smirk came over him as he took hold of the back of her neck and tilted her head to the side. Then his mouth opened over hers, demanding entrance, and she shuddered in his arms.
She shuddered for him and so did I, but for different reasons.
Logan pulled me backwards. “Come on, Sam.” His tone softened, and he led me away. He was trying to be gentle with me, all the way to his car and as he took me home, but it didn’t matter.
I was numb again.




25






My house was cold when I went inside. Logan flipped the lights on, but I shook my head. I didn’t want them on. He didn’t see me and went to the counter. A note was there and he lifted it to read, “Samantha, I am at Malinda’s. Please call me when you get in and I will come home. Love, David.” He lowered it, a slight sneer on his face. “Gee. That’s sweet of him.”
“Shut up.”
He put the note back. “Sorry.”
Images of them flashed in my mind. Mason on the truck. Kate on him. His mouth on hers. Her hand twisting in his hair. They kept coming and I couldn’t stop them. If I closed my eyes, they were worse. I was there again. When he tilted her head to the side and opened his mouth, I flinched. My eyelids flew up, but it didn’t matter. They were still there.
They were all I could see.
“Here.”
Feeling something cold being pushed into my hand, I looked down. Logan was holding a glass to me. He held the bottle up in his other hand. “I found your dad’s secret stash. He’s got good taste.”
“What is this?”
“Does it matter?”
I drank it. It was like water, and I held my glass up again. “More.” I needed more than more. Tonight I wanted to get drunk. All the pain needed to stop. I wanted to go back to being numb. Life was so much easier then.
We didn’t talk. Logan took my glass from my hand and went into the living room. When he went to turn the light on, I cried out, “Don’t.” He heard me this time and let the dark remain. I sat on one couch, and he took a chair across from me. The large windows were behind him and moonlight shone inside; no curtains restricted it. It felt warming to me. I had no idea why, maybe if the lights were on then I’d have to face reality. If the lights remained off, I could still hide.